Michigan

Our Turn: Is 'chat' speak destroying the English language?

High school students from 24 southwestern Michigan schools serve on the Kalamazoo Gazette's Young Editorial Staff (YES), which is coordinated by freelance writer Phyllis Rose. The students pick their own discussion topics. The views expressed in Our Turn are solely those of the students, not the Gazette. These Our Turn pieces were written by: Catey Koch, Marissa Miars and Brooke Karasch.

Tess McEnroeCatey KochThe score is in. Proper English: Zero. Chat speak: A decade’s worth of “OMGs” and “LOLs.” As heartbreaking as this is for English teachers, chat speak and its abbreviations have English in a choke hold and they don’t show any signs of letting go.

Despite its seniority, proper English is being phased out. Correct grammar and spelling lose because it’s quicker not to worry about it. People don’t want to take the time to properly type out, “I have to go” when “G2G” gets the message across just as effectively and more quickly.

Even when this “standardized” chat-speak is taken out of the equation, the use of English in American society is still going downhill. The presence of T-9 texting, which allows the texter to enter a full word without completely typing it out, is doing enough damage by itself. It cuts down on “OMGs” and “LOLs” as it makes it easier to use full words in a short period of time. But because the authors don’t have to know the full word in order to use it, they never actually have to know how to spell it correctly. And all the spell checking in the world can’t help when only half the word is spelled correctly.

While chat-speak may save time, are those three seconds really worth projecting a not-so-professional image? Chat-speak may be what all the cool kids are doing these days, but that doesn’t mean that employers or colleges are looking for people who can have entire conversations in abbreviations.

Sure, you may be able to get more information across more quickly by using a “TTYL” here or a “b/c” there, but you come across as unintelligent when you cannot use full phrases or proper spelling when and where it counts.

Chat-speak may indeed allow us to communicate faster, but it’s at the expense of proper English, which can only be summed up with an OMG.Catey Koch is a junior at Plainwell High School and is a member of the 2009-10 Gazette Young Editorial Staff.

Throughout its history, the English language has constantly evolved. Today, many Americans find reading works written hundreds of years ago, such as those of William Shakespeare, to be a daunting task. However, chat-speak takes the concept of simplifying the English language too far, manipulating it into something unreadable and counterproductive.

I understand the basic concept behind Internet lingo: Shortening words saves time when typing or texting. However, people often take this to extremes, resulting in wasted time as the reader spends twice as long attempting to decipher the message, let alone replying to it.

However, others argue that Internet lingo is easier than actually typing out a coherent sentence. To me, condensing every word to a mere three letters while capitalizing every other letter seems difficult, let alone exhausting.

One form of chat-speak that is gaining popularity is adding on extra letters to words. Nnot onlyyy iis thiss unnecessary, but itt refleccts pooorly uponnn Ameriicans andd theiir abillity to speell properlyy.

Certain terms in Internet lingo have even fallen into the bottomless pit of overuse and changed meaning. Once such example is “LOL,” originally meaning “laughing out loud” at a joke. It can now be tagged onto the end of just about any expression, no matter how humorous, stripping it of its meaning entirely.

As “LOLs” and unnecessary letters begin slipping into English essays, we must consider whether chat-speak will become our standard language of the future. Many simplified versions of words have become a part of our everyday banter, such as “exam,” the shortened form of examination, and “flu,” the abbreviated version of influenza. When it comes to chat-speak, however, I certainly hope this doesn’t happen.

If the English language is a computer, chat-speak is the virus and it’s spreading quickly. In order to uphold the foundation of English as a language, it’s simply a matter of America’s youth choosing what is grammatically correct over what is easy.

Marissa Miars is a junior at Portage Central High School and is a member of the 2009-10 Gazette Young Editorial Staff.

“Ur rite! They prolly dont no!” LOL, u have no idea what im sayn, do u? Those sentences are in chat-speak, a language used by text- and IM-savvy teenagers across the country. Although this may be difficult to read at first, the idea that this is ruining the English language maybe goes a bit too far.

In the days of the telegraph, those people were using a type of shorthand. They weren’t told they were ruining the English language. But only certain people used telegraphs so perhaps the telegraph was viewed more as progress than the ruination of a language.

Now, cell phones are considered one of the best inventions since the light bulb, and one of the most obnoxious inventions since the singing alarm clock. This is, in part, due to the fact that you can be talking to a person and find that she has stopped you mid-sentence to text someone. Is it simply that because texting is so easy and so much fun it overtakes an actual conversation? These arguments are often used by many of the people claiming that chat-speak is ruining the English language.

These same people tell you that chat-speak is ruining the language because sometimes kids will accidentally use chat-speak when writing a paper. Most are quick to fix the mistake once they realize it.

The English language has been around for centuries, and as such, it would be hard for something to destroy it, especially something that has only been around for a mere decade or two. It seems ridiculous to believe something so small and historically insignificant could ruin something so old as a language.

Ruining a language is very difficult to do. Since chat-speak is an English-based shorthand, can it truly be ruining the language? Or should it be considered merely a modern convenience that is to be short-lived, quickly overtaken by some new language fad?Brooke Karasch is a sophomore at Lawton High School and is a member of the 2009-10 Gazette Young Editorial Staff.